The Operator (Bruce and Bennett Crime Thriller 2) (2 page)

‘Hello? Mr Kingston?’ Her voice seemed to bounce
off the gleaming Italian tiled hall floor, the creamy, expensively distressed
walls, the lofty ceilings and swooping stairwell. ‘It’s Erica Bruce! Hello?’

 Kingston’s consulting room was on the left of the
hall, a brass plate on the open door. She froze. The doctor was in.

She felt a sudden giddy flush flood over her at
the sight of the man on the table, and the smell she unconsciously breathed in
which was interpreted instantly by the primitive parts of her brain, launching
an adrenaline response. Fight was not an option, flight was, but shock,
curiosity and confusion held her still. For a moment a scream tried to erupt
from somewhere inside her. She fought it down and stood with her eyes shut,
until the rushing in her ears became less deafening, the banging of her heart
less audible. She forced herself to go over to the body. Even now, he could be
alive - there might be something she could do. Though a glance at the bizarre
wounds, the blank eyes, the stilled blood told her none of the little bottles
she carried would be any good in this case. She had fantasised about how cool
it would be if she was able to cure this man of something, anything, even piles
or warts, and make him eat humble pie. It didn’t look as if he would be
worrying about piles again, if indeed he ever had.

‘Poor guy. I hope you didn’t feel too much of
this. I’m so sorry...’ For some reason she had to speak to him, he seemed so
alone. She felt tempted to touch him, offer comfort, but she didn’t.

‘Just stay there, and don’t touch anything,’ she
murmured to herself. She knew the drill. She rummaged in her large shapeless
embroidered bag for her mobile and punched in the numbers for emergency
services.

Murder, no doubt about it. That meant the police,
and that probably meant Detective Inspector Will Bennett and his minions. Couldn’t
be helped. ‘Well fuck him,’ she said aloud. Yeah right, been there done that,
very nice too while it lasted.

Waiting for the inevitable, she went back out into
the garden and sat on the white-painted garden seat next to the front door with
its Queen Anne fanlight, an elaborate great scallop shell moulding above it. She
kept seeing him crucified on that table where so many patients had painfully
lain, hoping his smooth pinkly clean hands would cure them with the magic knife
of surgery, the magic bullet of pharmacy.

The gibbon call of a police siren swooped louder
and nearer, a car roared up the quiet street, at first hidden by the high
hedges and naff topiary, and then swirled up the broad drive, stopping abruptly
just before it hit an ornamental urn of geraniums. Two officers jumped out,
first to respond. Their expressions were eager but stern. Chasing youths away
from bus shelters and picking up drunks at chucking-out time were more usual
police activities in the seaside town of Wydsand. Though more and more,
violence both domestic and random, fuelled by drugs (mostly a pick’n’mix of ket,
coke, E’s) complicating the proud ancient Nordic culture of binge drinking, had
enlivened the job. The PC looked absurdly young in his thick cuddly sweater
which seemed so unlike a uniform. Surely I can’t be old enough yet to think
police officers are too young, she thought. He ran into the house, while the WDC
stood in front of Erica, to ask if she’d made the call and take her name.

‘You know my name, Sally.’ Erica squinted up at
her.

‘I’m DC Sally Banner, Ms er...’ The young officer’s
elfin face, dusted with freckles, and her cropped sand-gold hair, gave her a
delicate appearance but her brown eyes were hard.

‘Oh for pity’s sake... there’s a man dead in
there, let’s not play silly buggers.’

‘Gotta do this by the book, serious crime and all.’
She wrote down ‘Erica Bruce’ without making Erica actually say it. Barely had
she finished that when the male PC ran out again, straight past the two women
to a flower bed where he vomited over a begonia. Erica felt the nausea rise in
her own throat and swallowed down the bitter hot liquid, as Sally Banner
hurried in in her turn, and came out again, pale and shaken, reaching for the
radio with trembling hands. This really was a big one. They really would have
to do everything right. And trust Erica Bruce to be right here in the thick of
it. In a carefully controlled voice Sally radioed for assistance, police
doctor, CSI, the works. The male PC sat down next to Erica, clearly thinking
here was something official he could do while parking himself next to someone
more attractive than a violently slain corpse. He opened his mouth to speak,
then shut it again, as if afraid of what his voice might sound like.

‘New on the job?’ Erica fumbled in her bag. ‘Here,
I might have something you can take for the shock. ‘

‘No thanks,’ said PC Paul Lozinski, according to his
name badge, in a tight voice. ‘We can’t take drugs on duty. I think we’ll have
to have a look in this bag, Ms er.’

She didn’t bother to object as he twitched the bag
from her hands and began pulling out tiny cylinders, reading the labels. Aconite,
Arsenicum, Belladonna, Opium. His eyebrows rose at the labels. ‘Poison?’ he
asked, eyes narrowing. There was no proper poison warning label on the bottles.
What was this woman into?

‘It’s OK, Officer. Those are homeopathic remedies.
Not only harmless, but beneficial...’

‘And totally discredited. By scientists.’ Sally
put in.

Erica ploughed on. ‘And totally legal...’

‘Not for much longer, with any luck.’ Sally was
clearly counting the days until she could lead a raid on Erica’s premises.

‘...and
still
totally legal. Which is
unlikely to be the case with you searching my bag. Why, do you think he might
have been poisoned?’

 ‘Oh, this stuff.’ Lozinski was holding the Bach’s
Rescue Remedy. ‘My mam has this. Swears by it.’ He opened the bottle and
dropped the dark liquid on his tongue from the glass dropper inside the cap.

‘Thanks,’ he said.

Sally Banner gave him a disgusted look. She must
feel her colleague had let the side down, first by being sick in front of a
witness and now this. He didn’t seem a bit ashamed though. Already the pallor
was washing out of his rosy fresh young face, as he introduced himself formally
to Erica and began to get on the case, looking at his colleague’s notes.

‘Ms Erica Bruce, is it? You found the erm... him?’

‘It’s Kingston. Robert Kingston. It’s his house.’

‘I see. Why exactly do you come to be here?’ It
was a loaded question. Erica knew the person to find the body would
automatically be a suspect.

‘Maybe we should do this in the car,’ said Sally.
She sounded nervous. What if Erica turned out to have done it, did a runner,
and made them look stupid? She could run, after all. That was how Erica and the
Guv had met, running on the beach. A meet-cute over a dead puffin, according to
goss. Erica suddenly swerved and stopped, and he fell over her. Erica wanted
its skull. Well of course, she would. The Guv was just another scalp for her
collection.

‘I think I need the fresh air,’ Erica said, ‘I
wouldn’t want to upchuck in your nice clean car.’ She wasn’t going to miss any
of the action shut in the car like a troublesome child. And she hated being
cooped up.

The thought of driving a sick-strewn car was
enough to give them pause. Erica watched Lozinski look at her, sizing her up, deciding
she’d be no match for them in a race or a struggle. Sally looked more
sceptical.

Lucky I came in disguise, Erica thought. The
loose, silky jacket, spotted scarf knotted below the neck, mid-calf pleated
skirt were a size too big for her, making her look even smaller than she was
and hiding the musculature regular, some would say obsessive, sessions at the
gym had developed. She’d borrowed the outfit from a librarian friend, thinking it
would make her seem demure and a bit dowdy and unconfrontational when
interviewing the great Mr Kingston, Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon. They
certainly made her seem harmless physically to the male officer, who had
relaxed slightly as soon as she had seemed to share his moments of weakness by
threatening their upholstery with vomit.

‘You seem remarkably calm.’ Lozinski still sounded
dubious. Had this x-chromosome contaminated person out-toughed him? None of the
other begonias seemed to have suffered.

‘I took some Rescue Remedy while I waited for you
guys.’

Scribbling furiously, Sally muttered something
which might have been ‘Sodding placebo,’ before going to greet the first of the
arriving hordes of CSI and related crime scene personnel.

She had learned well at the feet of her master,
Will Bennett, sceptic of this parish, thought Erica.

‘Placebo or not, it helps. I’m not denying it’s
been rather a shock. I’m guessing that’s your first dead body, Paul?’

‘No, it’s not,’ he began assertively then realised
this would make his reaction more feeble, not less. ‘I mean, I’ve seen dead
alcoholics and such. Nowt like this, mind.’ He tried to take control. ‘So
again, how do you come to be here?’

‘I’m a journalist.’ He looked at her warily, as if
reassessing her harmlessness. ‘I was due to interview Robert Kingston... the
dead man.’

That’s what he was now after all; all the
qualifications, publications, press photos, big earnings, all came down to
those two words; dead man, like the thud of the first two spadefuls of earth on
a coffin.

‘You can definitely
identify the, er, deceased as Kingston? You knew him?’ Sally said sharply,
veering back over to them as crime scene tape began to flutter with unsuitable frivolity.

‘Never met him. But I’ve seen photos on his online
profile and in the paper’s archives.’ It seemed wrong, and corny, to say ‘morgue’.
‘It - the body - looks like him. Aren’t you being a bit previous? ‘Deceased’ I
mean?’

‘How do you mean?’ Lozinski frowned.

‘Police doctor hasn’t said he’s really truly dead
yet.’ The officers exchanged looks and Erica realised her flippancy, a defence
against her own physical symptoms overwhelming her, was both out of place and
suspicious.

‘Big fan of
CSI
, all those shows,’ she said
weakly, trying too late to undo her remark.

The truth was she was more nervous about seeing
Will Bennett again, very much alive and probably kicking, than seeing the body
carried out. Sally Banner had already radio’d in that they had a witness on the
scene, waiting to be interviewed. Female, five foot three, late twenties,
blonde, slight build, by the name of Erica Bruce.

Another car appeared. Erica’s dismay was visible
on her face, nearly hidden as it was by her windblown hair.

‘What’s the matter, Miss? Known to the police, are
we?’ The green tinge returned to Lozinski’s face as he recalled, and regretted,
taking a substance from a bottle in this lass’s bag.

‘You could say that.’ He’d know soon enough. Sally
would catch him up. ‘I’m a reporter,’ she said again, as if this explained it,
or indeed, anything and everything. The magic of the media opened doors, and
shielded its servants. In theory.

Sally snorted, looking even more sceptical than
she had at Erica’s homeopathy. She went over to greet and escort the new
arrival, who turned out to be the police pathologist. A spare and dry-looking
man, he hurried past them into the house.

‘Got yourself a big story now then, haven’t you?’
said Lozinski. He closed in a little as if expecting Erica to race off to file her
scoop with the national press. She was in at the death, on the scene of a gory
story most reporters even in a big bad city would die for, and not only would
the police be unable to politely but firmly shove her out of the action, but
they would have to make strenuous efforts to keep her on the scene as an
important witness.

Erica felt a complete fool. It had never crossed her
mind until that moment that she had a big story. Must be the shock.

‘I’m not that kind of journalist - I mean, I write
features for newspapers and magazines. Health, alternative therapies, of
general public interest. Controversial treatments, con artists exploiting
desperate people, new findings, drugs and remedies.’

Editing, and writing most of, the weekly ‘You and
Your Health’ page on the Wydsand
Evening Guardian
, or contributing
regularly to ‘Well Being, Body and Soul’ online was hardly ‘hold the front page’
stuff.

Erica paused and held down the alien voluminous
skirt which threatened to blow up unsuitably saucily in the brisk breeze off
the nearby sea front. She wasn’t going to mention the rows she had with the
Evening
Guardian’s
editor over her habit of introducing controversy into what was
meant to be ‘a cosy women’s chat over the fence,’ as he put it.

‘However,’ she added, ‘of course since I’m on the
spot, I will be expected to give my editor a scoop for the
Evening
.’

She reached into her bag for her digital voice recorder.
Sally and Paul Lozinski were disposed to object - it was a case of ‘we will ask
the questions’. Who was in charge of this interview anyway?

Things were getting tricky, so it was almost
welcome to hear another siren approaching, wasting its sweetness on the desert
air of suburban indifference. PC and DC alike leapt up as senior officers
arrived amid the CSI personnel with much crackling of radios and equipment for
dealing with violent death.

Two figures were unfolding themselves from the
police car. One tall, dark-haired, blue-eyed and to be avoided at all costs,
none other than Detective Inspector Will Bennett, ex-lover of a certain
homeopath. The other, Detective Sergeant Hassan Massum, Asian, a little older, a
family man calmly and competently providing the ballast of more experience and
less career ambition.

‘What a pair of prats! Bring it on, boys.’ Despite
her brave words to herself, Erica felt the need to busy herself and her hands
and find a counter-irritant to what was coming so she called the
Evening
’s
editor, Ian Dunne. He was thrilled to hear the hot news as Erica gave the basic
details and her role at the scene. It was beginning to resemble some nuclear
disaster as an ambulance arrived and the babygro’d and booteed CSIs began to
mill about like big babies.